Whew!

What a Saturday! With much trepidation and many doubts (at least on my part...Bob was as calm and confident as ever) we cut and installed all of the plexiglass for the river. To support it on the left side of the case, we also had to install the beaver lodge and dam as well. Either one of those would've been a project in itself, but to get them both done in one day was incredible.

Bob and I cut the shapes out of the plexiglass in the morning, but without Peter's help, installation would've been almost impossible. Here is a shot of Peter supporting the weight and guiding the glass into place...I call it "Pete under glass". Good thing he doesn't have Mom's claustrophobia! He joked that I had him "sleeping with the fishes" like a proper mob boss.

Here is a shot of the first piece installed. (The rocks look odd because their removable tops are off) but you can see how we planned to have the weight supported by these river rocks.

All three pieces wound up fitting pretty good. I resigned myself to having seams that would show a long time ago and can live with it up to a point. There are a couple-three areas where I will get creative with algae and disguise the seam. Only after it was all installed was I able to admit to myself I'd been expecting ti to be a huge disaster to cover so large an area and be successful at representing a body of water. Now that it is finally installed, I am almost giddy with relief! Here is a shot of how the beaver lodge was created in sections:

The only way to get such a large item through the doors was to create it in pieces. There are 8.

Here is a shot of both dam and glass installed. Sorry about the reflection, I will get a full case photo one night when the windows don't show up. One thing about the beaver lodge. Everyone who see it comments about it's size so I'd like to explain. The height of the river's water determined the level of water seen in the beavers underwater entrance hole and the size of the beaver determined the space he takes up in the lodge (and it's a tight fit) so the whole thing was predetermined before I started carving the foam!

This was the hardest installation of the project and I look forward to installing the rest very soon. I want to leave you with a little hint about a surprise that will be added to the case around Christmas....we are waiting for a baby animal that is now at the taxidermist.